Quote Originally Posted by Tevo77777 View Post
"Mail shirt would be near useless as armor."
>Looks at all the Vikings that had just mail shirts, helmets, and shields
>Looks at all the Frankish warriors who till 950 AD had just mail shirts
>Looks at all the infantry who couldn't afford mail sleeves and mail going to their knees till around the 1200s
>Remembers how a shirt of mail could cost as much as a house or several horses, according to Anglo-Saxon documents

1200 to whenever mail got replaced with full plate armor or a breast-plate (Somewhere around 1400-1500s, is like 300 years.

500-1200 is like 700 years.

>Memories of Late Romans having mail shirt as well
>Google Late Romans
>Lots of Mail Shirts

Correction, 250-1200 years

The only problem a mail tunic provides is the weight, it's a flexible and decently comfortable armor. This is literally why in Pathfinder 2e, its noisy but "Flexible" to be very easy to move in.

Linothorax Armor literally would be harder to move in, despite being far cheaper and almost as protective.

"The only thing mail does is stop cutting, or slashing if you want a D&D term, but due to still being just one layer of supple clothes it only diminishes the power of blows a little, meaning the slashing blows get turned into blunt ones, and blunt and piercing impacts are not really affected."

>Swords were literally the most expensive weapon after the Axe
>Most of the peoples who wore mail shirts or could afford them...fought militias that used almost entirely spears
>Lots of memories of people testing arrows on mail and it stopping them just fine
>Memories of documentaries about how mail works
>No mention of these weaknesses or weaknesses in general

I am very skeptical of this information that goes against basically everything I know about armor and like five books I've read.

>Linothorax Armor was replaced by mail
>Why would armor that could easily stop cutting, stabbing, arrows, ect ect.... be replaced by armor that only was good against slashing?
>Mail was more expensive and harder to make

I'm pressing X so hard.

- Knowing this stuff is literally my living.
I realise I was unclear, and apologises for that. Allow me to ammend:

A mail shirt without padding underneath, limb protection, and an helmet would be near useless.

Yes, the Gauls, Romans, Franks, Vikings, etc. had mail shirts/tunics, generaly due to lacking the monetary means to invest more in expensive metal, but not *just* the mail, which is what I was trying to say.

Mail is useful because it is next to impossible to cut through, that is a fact. Wearing mail without impact-absorbing padding underneath is foolishness. Wearing mail without head and neck protection is foolishness. And it's not the mail itself that was the common-actions-hindering stuff, a lot of the time.

(In fact, the most famous mail shirt in fiction, Bilbo's mithril one, fails to protect its wearers against a stone to the head and a stinger in the neck, respectively, not to mention how Frodo was still hurt/put out of action for a bit when a blow landed square on where the shirt was protecting, due to still enduring the blunt force of the blow even without getting cut/pierced)

The Viking you mention was already decently protected with an helmet, shield, padded armor and usually some sort of arm/handicap
and leg/foot coverings. The mail was on top of that, for those who could afford it in this particular historical exemple.

As for your point about swords being expensive and mail-wearers almost exclusively fighting people using only spears... almost every fighting group on this planet has used some sort of slashing implement as a secondary weapon, since the invention of slashing implements. The poor in a militia weren't going to leave their knives at home just because the lord had an expensive sword, even if ideally their spears would take care of the issues before knives became needed.

I personally have seen documentaries on how mail does not stop arrows and bolts, but I would be more than happy to watch those you have watched that demonstrate the contrary.